Astronomy/telescopes

-the celestron binoculars 20x80 that i have arent really as greater than a regular pair of quality binoculars 10x50. is there any way to add lenses to binoculars to see further in to space?

-already got a small telescope but i want to look in to deep space and see the planets close up -which type of telescope would be the best for this-i know many exist but is the 130p celestron astromaster really suitable for deep space or the Skywatcher Explorer 130m Newtonian Reflector Telescope -SkyWatcher Skyliner-200P/1200 Classic Telescope -Celestron 31042 Astromaster 114EQ Reflector -SkyWatcher Explorer-130/900 EQ2 Telescope -
the telescopes that are listed above re about the size that is needed so which 1 i the best for deep space viewing with large clear images of these?
by

AnswerHi Jack

There is no way to "add" optical systems to binoculars to make them more effective at space exploration. Like telescopes, binoculars are limited by the size of the objective lens (that's the part that faces the sky) and you can't really change that.

That objective lens captures the dim light from deep sky objects, so it can help us see things that are dimmer than we can see with our naked eyes.

The eyepiece then takes the image formed by the objective lens and magnifies it. So once you have the image that the objective gets you, you can make it a bit larger by using different eyepieces, but only to a point. Most eyepieces are between 25 and 6 mm...and that usually means that the magnify the image from the objective by about 1 to four times. It's not practical to change that much, either.

Your search for a good scope will really depend on two things.

1. How big an objective lens do you want and can you afford? Right now, you are looking at scopes that are about 4 inches in diameter or so...and that's enough to show you the rings of Saturn, and some of the cloud belts on Jupiter (your binoculars will show you the moons of jupiter, if you look carefully.) But it won't show nearly as much of the deep sky list: galaxies and nebulae. Just to give you an idea of how crazy you can get, I have a telescope with a 17-inch mirror---absolutely huge. It's very hard to move around, and it was very expensive. And it still doesn't show me everything I want to see. If you want to see the nebulae and galaxies the way they look in photographs by the Hubble telescope---you'll have to buy the Hubble telescope.

2. The reason the Hubble works so well is that it is not only very large, but it is completely above the Earth's atmosphere. You will find that your ability to see anything in the nighttime sky depends not only on the telescope, but also on the clarity of the air around you. A city with lots of dust in the sky and many bright lights will reduce even the best telescopes to mediocre performance. Very dark skies are just the opposite. In a perfectly dark sky, we can see about 2500 stars...but in a city, it is often hard to see the brightest 250 of them. And while a telescope makes it better...it doesn't solve that problem.

Look for the scope with the largest objective lens or mirror---that will capture the most light. And then look for some dark places to use it!